Mikrotik hAP AC Router

After using Mikrotik products for few years now, I think I can almost guarantee that I am not going back to traditional routers anytime soon. Routers that are widely used at home or even at small business settings. I don't want to name any other brand name here simply because I didn't get time enough to explore other brands and their entire product lines.

Few years back I purchased Mikrotik hAP AC router only to try out Mikrotik product for the first time and learn things or two about their Router OS. Well, I must say it is not easy for average users like me and it wasn't meant to be so. The Router OS goes quite deep and allows users the amount of flexibility and customization that average users can't even fathom. It goes deep enough and learning curve is quite steep yet rewarding.

As the trend is moving towards the Wi-Fi 6 technologies, the hAP AC router may sound a bit outdated since it supports up to Wi-Fi 5. However, it can still be relevant if you are not using a gigabit internet connection at home expecting it to perform like modern routers. Technically speaking, even if you have a gigabit internet connection this router can still serve you well if you are willing to ignore some of it's limitations.

It uses a Qualcomm QCA9558 CPU. Clocking at only 720 MHz this CPU is definitely not anything close to what modern routers uses. Being fairly low powered CPU, it doesn't even require any active cooling system either. This dual band router will allow you to take advantage of 802.11ac speed while maintaining compatibility with 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n and 5 GHz a/n/ac nodes. There are total of 5 gigabit Ethernet ports available out of which 4 of them can be used to build gigabit network or connect other devices. First Ethernet port should be used as your WAN port and rest are LAN ports. If you have compatible SFP passive module, you can take advantage of that as well instead of the WAN Ethernet port.

You can use it as a PoE device, you can do so using the WAN port to inject the power and the LAN 5 port to power other devices. There's an USB port available which you can use to attache 3G/4G modem or even for extra storage. Even though there are no visible external antenna, you can find the omnidirectional antenna attached to the shroud inside. Since the entire housing is made out of plastic, it doesn't interfere with the Wi-Fi signal. Not having any external antenna was a big plus for me.

I am not going dwell too much into the specifications of this router as you can find ample amount of information of about this device in online already. Simply put this a simple five port gigabit router with features that can help you to connect to the internet and build a simple home network and may be little more.